Barclays

Apple still hasn’t made much of a commitment to selling into and serving big companies, at least relative to traditional corporate IT vendors like Microsoft, but Apple’s products continue to sell themselves.

British bank Barclays just placed an order for 8,500 iPads for its branch network, Matt Brian of The Next Web reports. This is believed to be the largest single order placed in the UK.

The company says it reviewed other tablet options but went with iPad because its employees insisted on it.

The bank wants to use an app called “Mortgage Brain” that was developed by a bank consortium and will allow branch employees to better serve customers.

The IR reseller who handled the iPad order says that it is seeing “increased uptake” of Apple products among other corporate clients. Apple has often talked about the “consumerization of the enterprise,” in which employees drive corporate purchases, as being a key trend driving its business. This trend shows no signs of slowing.

That such a large order was placed for iPads on the heels of the launch of Microsoft’s Surface tablet and Windows 8 doesn’t bode well for Microsoft. Microsoft now finally has a tablet in market, so when customers choose Apple or Android equipment, it’s no longer simply a matter of Microsoft not having a product to sell.

Barclays put out a note on the eight reasons Apple’s stock has been cratering. In the note is this handy table laying out each concern, and what Barclays thinks is the reason people shouldn’t over react.

He said, “I think there are two main explanations: 1. iOS includes iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. iPad in particular provides a big advantage vs. Android 2. iOS users tend to be heavier media consumers on average.”

This is important to keep in mind, because Android’s smartphone share only matters in the context of a “platform war.” If Android becomes a dominant platform, and developers focus on Android, then Apple and iOS are in trouble.

This chart suggests that despite the growth of Android in smartphones, Apple is still in control of the dominant platform.

According to Airbus and CERA, although cumulative growth in air traffic has totaled roughly 45% since 2000, fuel consumed by the global fleet of aircraft is up less than 5% over the same period, as airlines have accelerated aircraft parking/retirements of older airplane models and ordered newer more efficient replacements at a record pace. Greater efficiency (i.e. load factors) and fleet renewal are at the heart of an airline’s competitiveness in a world where fuel is now an airline’s largest single operating cost; this became the case mid-last-decade for the first time since the late 1970’s US deregulation.

It isn’t just Verizon’s Lowell McAdam with fascinatingcommentary at this Barclays Capital tech conference going down in New York this week. Ron Spears, who leads up AT&T’s Business Solutions division, had some notable things to say about enterprise mobility — specifically, the iPhone’s role in taking businesses to the road, a magic trick typically associated almost exclusively with BlackBerry over the past ten years. Basically, Spears says that he’s seeing extraordinary uptake on the business side with the iPhone since 2008 and the introduction of the platform’s first enterprise-focused features; in fact, he claims that “four out of every 10 sales” are to enterprise users these days and that it has all but caught up to BlackBerry for the kind of modern, tight, full-featured security that your average IT department needs. On a related note, Spears says that he hasn’t “seen the Android platform yet in the enterprise space,” but that he figures it’ll evolve over time to become “hard to ignore” to the enterprise segment. Of course, considering that AT&T has virtually no presence in the Android market at the moment, we’re not surprised that he’d take a lukewarm tack — so here’s hoping that changes fast. Follow the break for more highlights of Spears’ comments.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.